The capture of Gadhafi's son

Agencies | Updated: 2011-11-20 15:21

Saif al-Islam Gadhafi (2nd R) is pictured standing in a plane in Zintan November 19, 2011. [Agencies]

In the dead of night

Gadhafi's run had come to an end just a few hours earlier, at dead of night on a desert track, as he and a handful of trusted companions tried to thread their way through patrols of former rebel fighters intent on blocking their escape over the border.

"At the beginning he was very scared. He thought we would kill him," said Ahmed Ammar, one of the 15 fighters who captured Gadhafi. The fighters, from Zintan's Khaled bin al-Waleed Brigade, intercepted the fugitives' two 4x4 vehicles 40 miles out in the desert.

"But we talked to him in a friendly way and made him more relaxed and we said, 'We won't hurt you'."

Saif al-Islam was the smiling face of the Muammar Gadhafi's power structure. He won personal credibility at the highest echelons of international society, especially in London, where he helped tidy up the reputation of Libya via a personal charitable foundation.

Facing death penalty

Caught exactly a month after his father met a violent end, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi is wanted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity. Libya's interim leaders want him to stand trial at home and say they won't extradite him; the justice minister said he faces the death penalty.

His attempt to flee began on October 19, under NATO fire from the tribal bastion of Bani Walid, 100 miles from the capital. Ammar and his fellow fighters said they believed he had been hiding since then in the desolate tracts of the mountainous Brak al-Shati region.

Aides who were captured at Bani Walid said Saif al-Islam's convoy had been hit by a NATO air strike. Since then, there had been speculation that nomadic tribesmen once lionised by his father might have been working to spirit him across Libya's southern borders - perhaps, like his surviving brothers, sister and mother, into Niger or Algeria.